Comparing transcriptome profiles of human embryo cultured in closed and standard incubators

Jingyu Li; Jiayu Huang; Wei Han; Xiaoli Shen; Ying Gao; Guoning Huang

doi:10.7717/peerj.9738

Comparing transcriptome profiles of human embryo cultured in closed and standard incubators

PeerJ. 2020 Aug 11:8:e9738. doi: 10.7717/peerj.9738. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Jingyu Li¹, Jiayu Huang², Wei Han¹, Xiaoli Shen¹, Ying Gao², Guoning Huang¹

Affiliations

¹ Chongqing Key Laboratory of Human Embryo Engineering, Chongqing Reproductive and Genetics Institute, Chongqing Health Center for Women and Children, Chongqing, China.
² Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

Abstract

It is necessary to compare the transcriptomic profiles of human embryos cultured in time-lapse imaging (TLI) incubators and standard incubators (SI) in order to determine whether a closed culture system has a positive impact on embryos. In this study, we used RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq) to characterize and compare the gene expression profiles of eight-cell embryos of the same quality grade cultured in TLI and SI. We sequenced a total of 580,952,620 reads for zygotes, TLI-cultured, and SI-cultured eight-cell embryos. The global transcriptomic profiles of the TLI embryos were similar to those of the SI embryos and were highly distinct from the zygotes. We also detected 539 genes showing differential expression between the TLI and SI groups with a false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05. Using gene ontology enrichment analysis, we found that the highly expressed SI genes tended to execute functions such as transcription, RNA splicing, and DNA repair, and that the highly expressed TLI genes were enriched in the cell differentiation and methyltransferase activity pathways. This study, the first to use transcriptome analysis to compare SI and TLI, will serve as a basis for assessing the safety of TLI application in assisted reproductive technology.

Keywords: Embryo culture; RNA sequencing; Standard incubator; Time-lapse.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Special fund for clinical research of Chinese Medical Association (17020430712, 18010260755), and Chongqing YuZhong Science Project (20170127). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.